Romancing Your Child's Heart (2nd Edition): A Fresh Vision of Christian Parenting

By Monte Swan

An avid reader and homeschooler wrote, in her review published on Amazon.com: “The wisdom, life, humor and joy that pour through each page of ‘Romancing Your Child’s Heart’ has revitalized and inspired our home . . . for Monte’s passion for Jesus is real and extremely contagious! It’s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Healthy Life Press, LLC
• Release date: May 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781939267054

Monte Swan

Monte Swan and his wife, Karey, are the parents of three grown children and grandparents of six. They live in the mountains of Colorado, where Monte is a research/exploration geologist. He has been an adjunct professor of sociology and geology. He and Karey are popular speakers and musicians at parenting conferences nationally. They can be contacted through Healthy Life Press: [e-mail].

Book preview

What a great book! Monte has captured the essence of loving your children in ways that draw them to the Lord. His parents’ wonderful marriage, his childhood, and the raising of his children were filled with great examples to teach me how I can woo my children into a love relationship that points them to Christ.

Dennis Rainey, executive director of FamilyLife Ministries

Monte Swan is a great conversationalist. I can tell you without reservation—this is a book you ought to read. Swan has written wisely and well on the lost art of nurturing children. This book focuses on authority that is kind, whose easy yoke and light burden bring rest to the soul. Romancing Your Child’s Heart will make you a better spouse, friend, brother, sister, and most of all a better parent.

Tedd Tripp, PhD, pastor and author of

Shepherding a Child’s Heart

Romancing Your Child’s Heart provides a refreshing reminder that the consistent administration of pure love to a child’s heart is still the key to real success in parenting.

Dallas Holm, award-winning recording artist and songwriter

If out of all the multitudinous books on parenting out there, we were told that parents could choose but one—this would be the one. Were all new parents to read it, America would be a different place. I just wish I could have read it forty years ago! How many things I would have done differently!

Joe L. Wheeler, PhD, Great Stories editor for Focus on the Family

This book is the first incision for a parental pharisee-ectomy. As parents, we are so often frightened into judging our children by exterior standards and timetables that we forget that they are a treasure from God and they are okay just the way He has formed them. Monte dares us to love and enjoy our children with all the freedom and wide-open spaces that Christ has called us to live in.

Katherine Bell von Duyke, PhD, mother of ten

This engaging book looks at the family and sees it whole, looks at love and finds it boundlessly creative. There is a vision here—sorely needed in our overloaded and resentful homes—of freedom, adventure, and delight. Romancing Your Child’s Heart recaptures the joy of raising children by transforming training and instruction—both biblical ideas—into a lifelong courtship.

Richard A. Swenson, MD

author of

Margin

and

The Overload Syndrome

Monte Swan has written an encouraging and creative book for parents, filled with practical ideas on how to fill our kids with joy and love rather than guilt and obligation. All parents will be profited by this helpful and insightful book.

Jay Kesler, PhD, chancellor of Taylor University

Monte’s life and his book are great reminders to me that my greatest calling is not preaching the gospel to thousands sitting in big church buildings, but being Christ’s gospel to my kids as we hunt for crawdads in the ditch. May this book assist you in loving your children, and even more—may it help you to see how you are a child being romanced to life by the living God.

Peter Hiett, pastor

The Sanctuary Downtown, Golden, Colorado

Romancing Your Child’s Heart

m

(second edition)

Monte Swan

with Dr. David Biebel

HLP_logo_grayscale_large_new.tif

Romancing Your Child’s Heart

(second edition)

Copyright © 2015 by Monte Swan and David Biebel

Published by:

Healthy Life Press • 9375 Blue Mountain Drive • Golden, CO 80403

www.healthylifepress.com  •  [e-mail]

Cover Image: Getty Images/EyeWire Collection

Cover Design: Travis Swan

Interior Design: Judy Johnson

Chapter epigraphs are from songs by Monte Swan. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:

The Holy Bible, New King James Version

© 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Other Scripture quotations are from:

The Holy Bible, New International Version (niv)

© 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society,

used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The CS Lewis Company Ltd

for permission to use material from the following works of C. S. Lewis:

The Last Battle, by C. S. Lewis copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1956.

The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1942.

On Stories and Other Essays, by C. S. Lewis copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1981.

They Stand Together, by C. S. Lewis copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1979.

Extracts reprinted by permission.

Printed in the United States of America

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author or publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swan, Monte

Romancing Your Child’s Heart (Second Edition)

by Monte Swan with David Biebel

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-9392675-5-9

1. Family & Relationships / Parenting / General [BISAC: FAM034000];

2. Religion / Christian Life / Family [BISAC: REL012030];

3. Christian Child-Rearing.

To my wonderful parents,

Emery and Betty Swan.

Your lives wrote this book.

Contents

 Acknowledgments            9

Prologue: Straight and True            11

Part One: Romancing Your Child:

The Vision

 1. Once upon a Childhood            17

 2. Finding the Silver Bullet            27

 3. Living the Larger Story            39

 4. The Dynamics of Story            49

 5. Out-Romancing the Competition            61

 6. The Watershed            77

Part Two: Romancing Your Child:

The Strategy

 7. Requirements for Romance            97

 8. Parental Incarnation            131

 9. Profile of a Romancer            149

 10. Methods for Romancers            177

 11. The Sense of Wonder            209

 12. The Creative Image            233

 13. Creative Domains            253

 Epilogue: High and Far            279

Notes            295

Acknowledgments

Peter Hiett: Much of this book flowed from your messages. They broke spiritual dams while anchoring me biblically and helped me see the Larger Story and the romance more clearly.

Dr. David Biebel: Without you, my friend, brother, and fellow archer, this book could not have been written. In reality, I sang melody and you sang harmony.

Thomas Womack, Michael Christopher, and Margaret Sharpe, who took what was a pearly Colorado sky and turned it into a clear blue Colorado sky.

Kathy von Duyke and Tia Ciferno, for the continual prayer and encouragement and deep creative thought they gave throughout my research and writing.

Wade and Jessica Hulcy and the KONOS family, for their moral support and kindred-spiritship as I began this project.

Dr. Joe Wheeler, who helped me strengthen my idea of story: It is an honor to know you.

Stan Keith, for challenging my ideas and preventing me from taking myself too seriously.

Those who read my manuscript or discussed the idea of romance at various stages, encouraging me to write this book, including: Gene Swanson, Bruce Cripe, Jodi Hogle, Jim and Marty Johnson, Bekki Anderson, Philip Yancey, Ray and Trish Cone, Kevin Keating, Levinia Hayes, Gina Braun, Laurie Bailey, Bob and Tina Farewell, Chris McCluskey, Chuck Bolte, Vicky Goodchild, Gayle Graham, Dr. Larry Crabb, Dave and Joan Exley, Dr. Tedd Tripp, Bob Cryder, Dr. Ruth Beechick, Lisa Jacobson, Carol Bartley, and all the others who have sat around our dining room table.

My brothers and sisters-in-law: Mike and Linda, Skip and Cindy, and Scott and Chris. I am sure you are what God envisioned when He imagined family.

Heather, Travis, and Dawson, for your unconditional love, and for gladly giving Papa permission to use you as illustrations.

And Karey, the fairest of ten thousand. You are my co-author.

Prologue

Straight and True

He was an arrow in our quiver,

Then we held him in our hand.

Soon the bowstring held the arrow,

And the aiming part began.

High and Far

For as long as I can remember I’ve been enchanted by the flight of an arrow. By age four, inspired by legends of heroic archers in days gone by whose fame would live forever, I was making my own bows from alders by the creek and arrows from the straightest sticks I could find. From my mother’s sewing cabinet I smuggled strings for my bows and pieces of cloth to make a proper archer’s attire.

Even today, when I pick up a bow, I’m transported back to the woods behind our home in Wisconsin, where I was Robin Hood leading his Merry Men. I can see the green leaves of springtime, smell the flowers of summer and the burning leaves of autumn as I crawl along the musty earth, trying to ambush one of the king’s deer or anything else with fur or feathers. Though I never hit a single bird or beast, my joy was undiminished because I was living a fairy tale, participating in a story in which the adventure was everything. My boyish soul was caught up in the romance of it all.

Early one morning when my children were still young, I arose before dawn. Life felt wonderful, just as it had when I was a child. But adult anxiety suddenly gripped me. I want this day to last forever. I wish time would slow down! I have these arrows in my quiver, but before they can be released they need to be sharpened, fletched, balanced, maybe even straightened.

With these thoughts in my head I sat down and penned a song I called Arrows. The chorus went like this:

And time seems to fly

Oh, the years pass so quickly now,

Like sand through your fingers

You hold it once and then it’s gone.

The children keep changin’.

They grow as the years rush by.

Like arrows in a quiver,

They’re made to someday fly.¹

More recently, when our oldest son joined my wife, Karey, and me in singing for a group of parents, it suddenly struck me: The future has arrived. Travis was already a college student, a balanced arrow, strong and sharp. But which way would he fly? How straight? How true?

When we finished, the audience wanted to question Travis, something we hadn’t anticipated or rehearsed. They weren’t as interested in our advice as they were in knowing how our approach had worked with a real person!

Karey and I stood behind our son, waiting for our report card to be read in public. The suspense was intense; all we could do was watch, listen, and pray.

Do you feel your parents oversheltered you as you grew up?

Not at all, Travis replied. I didn’t feel so much sheltered as strengthened.

Travis’s response brought me face-to-face with a reality that eventually confronts every parent. One day our child is safe in the quiver; then we hold the arrow in our hands; and the next day the arrow is on the string, the bow is bent, and the child is released and flying into the future toward some target beyond us. Much of the flight we will not even be around to see.

Our hope is that our child will fly straight and true to the heart of Jesus. Yet most of us have known sincere Christian parents who lost their child’s heart. They’ve watched as sons or daughters turn their backs on God and walk away—their love and affection captured by the world. These parents may have diligently tried to protect their children from evil and prepare them for success in life. They may have taught them biblical doctrine and trained them in proper Christian behavior. But the children chose the way of fools—the way of wickedness. It doesn’t make sense, and we desperately hope it won’t happen to us.

Perhaps protection, preparation, and even Christian training and biblical knowledge are not the real keys. Maybe these valid and essential things can monopolize too much of our time, distracting us from the real issue—the winning of our child’s heart.

While we’re guarding the front door, is it possible Satan is sneaking in the back? Could there be a missing ingredient in today’s parenting model, something of which even the most committed Christian parents may be unaware, yet something that will guard that back door?

I believe there is.

The key to winning the hearts of our children is the often overlooked biblical concept of romance—not the world’s concept, but God’s. He sent Jesus Christ to earth not to storm our hearts but to woo us and draw us to Himself, winning our uncompelled love. If we truly make Him our model, and pattern our approach to our children after His approach to us, we automatically begin to parent from the inside out instead of the outside in. We look past behavior to the heart; we look past symptoms to the cause; we turn isolated events into shared, romance-enhancing experiences that connect to something larger than ourselves.

How exactly a child’s heart-desires turn to God we don’t know. But we do know the Holy Spirit gives that desire and we parents are used as instruments of God in this process.

Romancing Your Child’s Heart builds on the belief that romance is central to the biblical parenting model. It presents a vision that will help us reexamine and reassess whole realms of our lives.

Why? Because nothing is more important for parents than winning our child’s heart for Christ.

Part One:

Romancing Your Child

~The Vision~

m

I see His blood upon the rose,

And in the stars the glory of His eyes.

His body gleams amid eternal snows;

His tears fall from the skies.

I see His face in every flower;

The thunder and the singing of the birds

Are but His voice—and, carven by His power

Rocks are His written words.

All pathways by His feet are worn,

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,

His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,

His cross is every tree.

Joseph M. Plunkett

Chapter 1

Once Upon a Childhood

He’s found riches in rocks and ropes and rain

And in bugs and bark and bones.

He’s got a treasure trove that money can’t buy

And his own gold mine in his boyhood blue sky.

Fires of His Wonder

Once upon a time a little boy lived in the north woods of Wisconsin.

He lived in a log cabin, built decades after the last stands of virgin white pines had all been logged. Homesteaders had followed, but by the time of the boy’s birth most of them had moved elsewhere. Abandoned homesteads and overgrown fields whispered tales of hard labor and lean times, of the courage of those who struggled to cultivate this land of stony soil and short summers.

The boy’s grandfather, the son of Swedish immigrants, told him many stories of those early days vhen da pines gruew so tall dat da highest branches seemed to vreach da stars, and vhen you valked amoung dem it vas like valking truew a catedral.

Sometimes the old man’s voice quavered with emotion. A faraway look in his gray blue eyes pulled the boy in, and suddenly he would be there, in the story with his grandfather, wandering through an enchanted forest created by God.

The cabin symbolized his parents’ dream of establishing a simple home in a beautiful place, close to nature and family. It stood at the edge of a deep, clear lake, seven miles from town on a country road that wound through hardwood hills and scented cedar swamps. It included a porch for sitting and a fireplace sculpted of fieldstones from the rock pile of an abandoned homestead. The forest surrounding it possessed a timeless serenity that stilled the souls of all who passed by.

Diamonds danced on the waters of summer. The lake was also alive with fish, which the boy’s mother loved to catch. One sunny day, when the boy was three, his mother returned from the lake holding up a stringer of bass. She claimed she could set her watch by those bass, which fed every day at the same time. The boy’s father came down to see, but when they turned to show her catch to their son, he had disappeared.

They thought first of the lake, but it was calm. They looked in the cabin. They scanned the woods, where the sanctuary of dark green hemlock and cedar, roots entwined, had grown into a maze that almost blocked their way.

Just as they were about to plunge in, they saw the boy sitting on the soft moss at the edge of the trees, trying to hug the ancient, charred stump of a white pine. He was making friends, using all his senses to study this sentry of the woods. He was a tree hugger before tree hugging was cool.

The boy never forgot how that stump smelled, felt, tasted, or even what it said directly to his soul in that magical moment—a story of the million hours of sunlight it had drunk in, of primeval land that had never felt the blade of a plow or heard the ring of an ax. Someone was wooing his heart. He was in a state of pure wonder.

As you’ve probably guessed, that boy was me. Looking back, it seems both poetic and prophetic that this—my earliest memory—involves God’s romancing my heart to Himself. My parents never forgot that day, and in the years to follow they often recalled that picture of their son’s first true encounter with God’s creation.

Like the North Star

After the old-growth hemlock and hardwoods of northern Wisconsin had been logged off, my father found work in the carpentry trade in southern Wisconsin. But we frequently returned up north to visit my grandfather’s cabin, trips that I anticipated with such passion that thoughts of them occupied my mind for days.

In the summer I often stayed for extended periods with Grandpa. Life was simple there, mostly revolving around fishing, swimming, exploring, and storytelling. My grandfather told story upon story, connecting me to the old days. Our imaginations fed off each other. We were friends, roaming from place to place, each story leading to another, nurturing and reinforcing my sense of wonder. I wanted to know all about the trees, the fish, and my great-grandfather’s world.

I was often homesick during my stays with Grandpa, but my experiences with him reinforced my passion for the outdoors—especially fishing for muskies, the fish of three thousand casts. (By the time I was twelve, I had a severe case of muskie fever, and my parents helped me start a business delivering newspapers so I could feed my fever; it took me a year and a half to save enough money to buy the specialized equipment I needed.)

When each stay with Grandpa ended and it was time to go south again, tears filled my eyes as I watched the last of the old pine stumps disappear into the distance. The stumps were monuments to paradox—on one hand, they spoke of creation, beauty, and nature; on another, of greed, fire, and civilization. They were my link to the old times, a special bond I shared with those who had gone before.

As I grew older, up north became a reference point, like the North Star, helping me regain my orientation when life didn’t seem to make sense. Recently, while visiting my parents, I searched for just one stump to show my son. I soon realized they’re all gone.

My Mystical Tutor

In southern Wisconsin where we moved, my father had built another house for his family, next to a stream I called the crick.

The crick drew me with irresistible force. It held a mystical quality unlike anything I’d known before. Beyond the flowing water, which would have called to any boy my age, the stream possessed an identity of its own. Its face changed with each new day; every changing season provided newly penned stories, written just for me.

At first, my parents didn’t allow me to go near it. The waters seemed dangerous even if they were quite shallow. But before long they realized it was in my best interest to begin my schooling there. For several years the crick tutored me in biology and geology as well as engineering and architecture.

I constructed dams of rocks and mud that would sometimes stop the flow of water long enough for me to run downstream and collect fish and crawdads. I also built a tree house above the crick, complete with an intricate network of rope swings. While I was hammering on it one day, the main supports broke and everything fell. I did a full gainer and ended up sticking my head into the mud three feet under water. I swallowed about a quart of water before figuring out which way was up and finding the surface. But that challenge was nothing compared to my mother’s efforts to empty my stomach and clean me up.

I captured many creatures in or near the crick to keep as pets. My favorites were baby snapping turtles and little fish—one of which my youngest brother eventually trained to jump into his hand. I kept salamanders in our basement, in a hole near two well pipes. They liked the arrangement so much they made it a family affair, reproducing until there were nearly a dozen, all living a lizard’s utopian dream. They waited patiently for me to feed them the juicy night crawlers I gathered after summer rains. And though my mother dreaded walking across that section of the basement to get to the root cellar, she never asked me to remove the creatures, or my father to cement the hole.

One day, Mom found fishing worms floating to the surface in her washing machine. I’d figured out that my jeans pockets were the best place to carry angleworms, which I dug as I fished. After the initial shock she laughed and laughed. Later, though, she shed a tear or two as she realized that someday there would no longer be fish bait floating in